


In the Morning

by exovelvetwriters



Category: EXO (Band), Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, EXOVelvet, F/M, Fluff, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28590090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exovelvetwriters/pseuds/exovelvetwriters
Summary: In the morning, he cooks her breakfast.Genre: Slice of Life, Prompt: Kingdom
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O & Park Sooyoung | Joy, Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Park Sooyoung | Joy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17
Collections: EXOVelvetWritersFest 2.0





	In the Morning

Sooyoung wakes up to the smell of buttered toast and black coffee.

It wasn’t something unusual, for this was usually what Sooyoung wakes up to. Buttered toast and black coffee usually meant that her roommate was in a good mood, and in reciprocation, Sooyoung likewise was in a good mood. Her roommate cooked well, after all, and a ready-made breakfast meant Sooyoung did not have to make breakfast for herself. Sooyoung wasn’t a good cook, so that was definitely a plus.

“Good morning,” she calls out as soon as she rolled out of bed. She pulls a sweatshirt over her pajamas while she walked barefoot to their shared kitchen, and only as she drew nearer did she realize that it wasn’t just buttered toast and black coffee.

“An omelette?” Her sleep-scratchy voice rasps out, the sleep melting away from her eyes. Her roommate was working at the stove, focused on the task at hand, but at the sound of Sooyoung’s voice, he looks over his shoulder, a glint of recognition flashing in his wide eyes.

“You’re awake,” Do Kyungsoo speaks, voice deep but warmly welcoming. “Take a seat and have breakfast.”

Sooyoung watches Kyungsoo in marvel as she takes a seat by the island counter, where already a couple of plate settings were already laid. “You’re in a good mood,” Sooyoung notes, voice tinged with suspicion. “That’s… strange.”

Do Kyungsoo is twenty-seven, but he could easily be mistaken for someone in his early twenties, especially if he laughed. At that moment, a smile had played at the corners of his lips as he carefully flips the omelette onto her plate. Only when the omelette — ham and cheese, their apartment staple — landed neatly in the middle of her plate does he smile full-on, like he was so full of secrets he could not contain them anymore.

“Okay, you’re being creepy,” Sooyoung laughs, incredulous, gaze pinned on Kyungsoo and his rather uncharacteristic show of emotion. “Spill, what’s the tea? Did that girl from the production team give you the time of the day?”

“What girl?” Kyungsoo’s thick brows furrows, and Sooyoung waves her hand to catch his attention. Kyungsoo mulls things over a lot of the time and when he does, there was no pulling him out of his reverie.

“Kidding! Just kidding. Now, what is it that you’re smiling about? I just woke up and I’m almost blind with how bright that grin is.”

Kyungsoo chuckles, shaking his head, his lips curving as if wanting to speak, but then deciding not to. Instead, he pulls something out from inside one of the kitchen island drawers, and hands it to Sooyoung. “Open it.”

She chuckles because he is being so smiley it was becoming really weird. Kyungsoo never really did smiley, at least, not so early in the mornings. “What is this?” Her hand reaches out to take the envelope from Kyungsoo. Her first thought was  _ our electricity bill? _ but then it would make no sense why Kyungsoo was so smiley about it. Bills stressed them out to kingdom come. But this is not the electricity bill, she realizes as her fingers closed in on the envelope. It is pristine white, her name and address printed in neat letters in the middle of the envelope’s printable side. She turns it over and pulls the papers inside, spreading them open with nonchalance that came with necessary curiosity.

“Holy  _ fuck _ .” She curses, the words coming out before she could even think about them properly. Kyungsoo flicks a bit of toasted bread towards her.

“One dollar in the swear jar, Miss Park,” Kyungsoo teases, before leaning over the island so he could peek at the letter her eyes were reading and rereading. “Come on, don’t leave me hanging, what does it say?”

Sooyoung’s eyes read that one phrase that mattered over and again. “I got in.” She whispers, finally. In a slightly louder voice, she turns to Kyungsoo, hands shaking, eyes tearing up. “ _ I got in. _ ” 

“Holy  _ fuck, _ indeed,” Kyungsoo says, jaw growing slack as he takes the letter from Sooyoung. Sooyoung’s shoulders were beginning to shake now as she tries to not bawl out tears of joy all over Kyungsoo’s omelette. She still wanted to eat, and Kyungsoo’s omelette was  _ divine _ .

“ _ Dear Miss Park, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the role of Perdita _ — Holy  _ fuck _ , Park Sooyoung!” In the pride in Kyungsoo’s voice lay her confirmation that she has not read it wrong, and it is the last straw: her floodgates opened and she was soon ugly-crying all over the breakfast Kyungsoo prepared for the two of them, but Kyungsoo was there, to the rescue with comforting hugs, patting down her back and whispering how proud he was of her, that she deserved it, that she did so well.

And with that, Sooyoung gives herself leeway to believe.

-

They were both musical actors, fresh out of acting school, when they met each other at an audition for a production of  _ Les Miserables  _ three years ago _.  _ They both did not make it, but they found solace in each other in the heartbreak of being refused from the dream roles of a lifetime. They bonded over a sad crab stick and cucumber sandwich — acting school grads are some of the brokest people in the world, it seemed — and they became fast friends. Kyungsoo was reticent as a person, but he liked it that Sooyoung could make him talk, and Sooyoung liked Kyungsoo because he never beat around the bush, and he knew exactly what to say and when to say it. They frequently met at auditions, until they morphed into friends that met up regularly over coffee, sharing ideas about auditions they think the other should go to, or evaluating each other’s audition tapes, sometimes even helping the other film said tapes. 

When the opportunity presented itself in the form of Sooyoung’s roommate moving out because she has graduated, it was Kyungsoo who first came into mind. It didn’t take much convincing, and two weeks later, they were roommates as well as allies in the whole theater world.

Although Kyungsoo doesn’t audition for many musicals nowadays, being apprenticed at a restaurant as a junior cook, Sooyoung still goes to many. This was her dream: being able to experience the ecstasy of performing was her own personal brand of heaven. The couple of hours being someone else was her literal escape, and as long as she could keep doing this, she would.

-

Sooyoung wakes up to the smell of buttered toast and black coffee, but the air smells sweet, too. Curious — they never eat anything sweet for breakfast, mostly because Kyungsoo was not a sweet-tooth, and he was the one in charge of the meals in this household. She peeks into the kitchen, and she sees Kyungsoo humming, his back from where she was standing was relaxed, like they always were whenever he was in his element.

He is making pancakes.

“What’s the special occasion?” Sooyoung asks, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she steps closer, peering into the pan.

“It’s your first day, isn’t it?” He answers and his voice was so warm. Kyungsoo was almost never warm because he was not a very outwardly warm person, but he was in his element, he was doing what made him happy: cooking. Sooyoung once joked that it was a lucky person whom Kyungsoo would look at as warmly as he looks at the food he cooks, like how he was focused onto the pancakes cooking on low heat. “Remember what Coach Lee said?  _ Always start your day --” _

“— _ with a little sugar, _ ” Sooyoung finishes, shaking her head. Trust Kyungsoo to remember that from their early days in theater workshop. “Right, right, I forgot about that.”

“Ooh. Don’t say that aloud. Coach Lee might haunt you,” he jokes, turning the stove off and gesturing for a plate, which she provides, reaching for one standing in their drying rack.

Sooyoung rolls her eyes. “Haunt? He’s still alive and kicking, Kyungsoo. We had dinner with him a week ago.”

“Oh, yeah. He might still come and haunt you though, one of his students, being a travesty to the art.” He says, putting the pancakes into the plates. He nudges her side slightly, jutting his chin towards the table. Sooyoung follows suit, situating herself on one of the chairs as Kyungsoo slips the loaded breakfast plate in front of her.

He must have fully expected her to eat up, but she sits there staring at the pancake, trying to breathe normal. Her first day. Her first major stage play.

“Sooyoung.”

The thing about knowing someone for a long time is knowing all the little nuisances about them. You get to know what makes them tick, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, and you also get to know how to revert their moods. Kyungsoo’s fingers wraps around her hand, thumb gently caressing along her pulse, as if coaxing it to beat a little slower. “You’ll be fine,” he murmurs as soon as she releases her breath. Kyungsoo knows that in an anxiety attack, she tends to hold her breath for an extended period of time, and when she does that, high chances are she’ll faint. Today was a big day for her, Kyungsoo doesn’t want her to miss it.

“You’re good, this is your show, you’ll crush it,” he says gently, and Sooyoung nods, her forehead resting on his shoulder, because he is that close enough.

“And what if I don’t?”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” he retorts, patting the top of her head. “You’ll do amazing, I know you will.”

-

Sooyoung comes home to the smell of melted cheese and toasted bread.

Dinners were usually a simple affair in their shared apartment, for Kyungsoo worked long hours at the restaurant where he was apprenticed. Sooyoung always takes the evenings as her opportunity to make up for him preparing breakfast, but with her ignorance of everything related to the kitchen that she usually just buys chicken and tteokbokki from the corner store she passes by on her way home from her errands. Tonight though, she is almost vibrating in pleasure, almost too excited to relay everything that has happened at today’s practice. Today, she bought something else.

The garlic bread goes in the toaster, the pasta is wrapped in foil and deposited in there as well, and she must have done something wrong because the entire apartment smelled like cheese, so much so that when the door opened a half hour later, Kyungsoo’s face, lined with exhaustion with grueling work brightened in amusement.

“Did you burn anything?” Kyungsoo laughs, and perhaps Sooyoung should have been insulted, but Kyungsoo knew her better than anyone. His jacket comes off and is laid neatly across the back of the couch. He never comes home in his pristine white uniform, and he always wears black.

“No, but I did make delicious pasta. Well.. heated it up is more correct,” Sooyoung answers, making space for Kyungsoo to reclaim his spot in the kitchen. He does, and they fit together like this: like puzzle pieces that has always belonged in their respective places. “How was your day?”

“I guess we’re having bread and cheesy pasta tonight,” his tone was deep and cheerful. Raising his eyes to meet hers, he shrugged one shoulder. “It’s going great… I get an exhibition test on July eighteenth. If I do well I’d be eligible to move up in the kitchen, given my own knife set.”

“Hey, that’s great, right?” She knows knives were important to chefs, like how a stable voice is important to musical artists.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo says, hands busy in trying to make Sooyoung’s effort at dinner a palatable effort. “But hey, how did the table reading go?”

And Sooyoung tells him everything about the role, because once Sooyoung is allowed to run her mouth, she does run it. She tells him about how Perdita was the queen of a kingdom who got lost in childhood and deals with a lot of stuff before reclaiming her throne. “But even downtrodden, Perdita apparently does not lose her queenly charm, she still rises above all others, that is apparently how exceptional she is,” Sooyoung says, finishing the last of the garlic bread, and then reaching for the box of tissues on the counter where Kyungsoo had pressed his hip against. Kyungsoo watches her as she does so, like everything she does is an object of curiosity. “And I don’t quite know how to do that, because the director doesn’t seem to like me very much,” she shrugs.

She doesn’t know how she could act nonchalant, because a director not liking you could very well make your life hell, but Kyungsoo is trying to hide his smile, ducking his head in a very obvious way, for Kyungsoo does not know how to hide his glee, it being a rare expression to cross his countenance

She playfully flicks her used tissue towards him. “What are you laughing about!” And yet her tone loses all gravitas, for she herself begins to laugh too.

“You’re worried about not being queenly enough? You were pretty much the queen bee in theater school,” Kyungsoo snickers as he grabs the napkin, throwing it properly into the trashcan just beside the counter.

“That and this is different,” Sooyoung says. “I can’t exactly scare people off, Perdita is supposed to be magnanimous and beautiful.”

Kyungsoo watches her, then, for a long while, and Sooyoung does not quite know what to do, except stare right back. Kyungsoo does not really speak much, and these stare downs are their bonding moments most of the time. She knows how to break him, with a raised eyebrow and a petulant smile.

He laughs, and she sees the lines of his eyes, the lines of exhaustion and sleeplessness. He is working hard, he will soon get his knives and will be moved up in the kitchen. Sooyoung feels silly. “I think you should go to bed,” Sooyoung suggests softly.

“Oh, we should both go to our respective beds,” Kyungsoo chuckles, reaching out to ruffle her hair. She laughs at that, even though she dislikes people touching her hair. Kyungsoo is one of the only people she trusts. “It’s late. Tomorrow, we shall practice your lines.”

“Ooh, very formal Mister Doh,” Sooyoung says in a faux-British accent, and Kyungsoo laughs – a clear, melodic sound.

“So worried about portraying a queen and yet you have it perfect already,” he remarks, before gently nudging her shoulder towards the bathrooms, because of course, ladies first. Even though he looks like he could just fall over and pass out. “Go. I’ll clean up, Your Majesty.”

And Sooyoung laughs then, following what he says, because Kyungsoo can be really stubborn when he wants to, and him calling her that made her feel confident that maybe, just maybe, he is right about her being fit to be royalty.

-

Sooyoung wakes up to the smell of fried chicken and freshly-squeezed juice. Today, Sooyoung does not have time to dally: first month of rehearsals, she woke up late, and the director already does not like her.

Kyungsoo is surprisingly still there, standing by the kitchen counter island, but he is hunkered over his laptop, brows furrowed as he peered through his thick glasses. Sooyoung wonders what he is up to, but she has no time to ask. “Good morning!” she greets instead as she hopped around, looking for her bag, her shoes, her script.

“Lunch is in the bag on the counter, your shoes are on the rack,” Kyungsoo says, eyes not lifting from his computer screen. Sooyoung finds everything in every place he mentioned, and her panicked heart fills with overwhelming thankfulness. She runs over to hug him—he did not like to be hugged, at least by surprise, but she couldn’t help herself.

“What would I do without you?” she muses as her arms wrap around his neck from behind, even though he is taller than she is. He does not shrug her off: he is used to Sooyoung like this, because Sooyoung is a tactile person and likes to express her affection physically. He does not mind, not at all, not anymore, after years of friendship. Instead, he melts, and his free hand pats her arm.

“Probably still in bed right now?” Kyungsoo chuckles, and Sooyoung laughs, because there was no way she would be waking up in the morning without the help of the sumptious scents of his cooking. She gives him a large squeeze again, and he audibly whimpers, making her let go.

“Alright, too tight,” Sooyoung says as she slings her bag over her shoulder, the one that she had slipped her script and Kyungsoo’s packed lunch into. “We’ll practice lines later?” she asks hopefully.

Kyungsoo pauses his reading, and he looks down at her, dark eyes smiling even though his plump lips aren’t. “Bring the popcorn. I’ll try to get home early.”

-

Sooyoung gets home to darkness, and she rushes to heat up the chicken that Kyungsoo had left in the fridge for their dinner in the only appliance she could touch in Kyungsoo’s kingdom: the toaster. The kitchen smells of yangnyeom chicken and Sooyoung’s stomach begins to rumble. She stares at the kitchen clock, counting down the seconds until the usual time Kyungsoo’s back.

He stumbles into the house twenty minutes late, face exhausted but a smile still directed at his roommate. As he shrugs his jacket off, he sniffs the air, “Did you burn anything?” He asks, and Sooyoung laughs.

“I may have,” she answers, and Kyungsoo laughs, warm and hearty.

-

Sooyoung wakes up to kimchi and frying eggs, and the sound of Kyungsoo singing Perdita’s solo in the second act.

Kyungsoo’s singing voice is full and rich, and Sooyoung does not know how to properly describe his voice, but it is beautiful. She liked practicing lines with Kyungsoo for it also meant she could get to hear him to sing again. She has heard him sing plenty of times when they were both still students at the school, but when he quit musical theater to focus on his other passion in cooking, hearing him use his voice to its full potential became a rarer opportunity, one Sooyoung greedily treasured and fiercely guarded.

Kyungsoo does not stop singing when she enters the room, instead he continues, and with his eyes he invites Sooyoung to join in. Like a morning warm up for her voice, for the whole day she would be singing, and what better way to train than sing before you’ve even had breakfast? Sooyoung joins him around the second verse, his voice willingly dropping in pitch to synchronize perfectly with her higher tone, and their voices reach a harmony that years of practice as partners and friends in the art has given them. His voice drops to a deeper pitch when she reaches the crescendo of the ending, and at the end they sit in silence, catching their breaths, amazed at themselves, for the brilliance of the show they performed for a bowl of kimchi fried rice and sunny side up eggs.

He makes his way to the door: must be an early day at the restaurant. “We’ll still practice later, right?” She asks, curious. She is always better when she practices with him.

“I’ll… try,” Kyungsoo says, voice apologetic, and she tries not to be disappointed. “If I get out of work early, we could.”

She might have looked she was sulking, because he was laughing again, reaching for her arm, squeezing her wrist lightly. “You’ll do great, Soo.”

-

Sooyoung wakes up to the smell of waffles and chocolate spread, and reluctantly, she smiles as she pushes herself off the bed, instinctively. 

Kyungsoo isn’t in the kitchen when she gets there, but he does leave a note, right next to the bottle of chocolate syrup.  _ Sorry for not making it in time last night! You’ll do amazing, Soo! _

Sooyoung sits in silence in the middle of the kitchen, with nothing but the clinking of the fork against the porcelain plates. It does not occur to Sooyoung that she is eating off their best china, all she knows is it’s the fifth day of waffles and chocolate and scribbled apologies that she just knows are half-meant.

-

“Dress rehearsals are in a week,” she ventures, one morning when she catches him on his way out, decked in his dark shirts and brown backpack and the snapback pulled down on his eyes. He watches her wide eyes, blinking, and then the realization probably dawned on him after a couple of moments for his face lightens up. Sooyoung bites her lower lip, relief flushing through her body.

“Will you be there?” She asks, timidly. “It’s at seven.”

His face darkens for a moment and she bites her tongue to keep from begging.  _ Please come _ . 

“It’s… July eighteenth?” Kyungsoo asks. She nods.

“A Saturday. Your day off.” She says earnestly. She needs him there. He is her rock, and if she sees him in the audience she knows she’ll be okay. It was their tradition: they always have each other’s backs.

Kyungsoo watches her again, like he was waiting as well. And she stares back, eyebrow raised, lips smiling. Like their game: whoever smiles first wins.

He does not smile, but he does chuckle, the laughter never reaching his eyes, which was curious, but the curiosity faded when he speaks the next words, the only words that mattered: “I promise I will try.”

-

Sooyoung comes home to the smell of deep fried croquettes and galbitang.

Today was the dress rehearsal, and she is scared. She made so many mistakes during the first act that the director was exasperated at her halfway through, and she had to take fifteen to try to stabilize her breathing before the second act. She is scared, opting to go straight home without even scrubbing the makeup off her face, or unpinning her hair from the elaborate knot the costume designer insisted she wear. She hates admitting it but she felt extremely ill-prepared, and maybe the director felt it, too, because he was extremely cross with her for the entire practice session for  _ you’re singing too high, Perdita is bereaved! Sing like you are bereaved!  _ She does not know what that meant.

Her throat hurts and her eyes sting with unshed tears of embarrassment and humiliation, and betrayal.

Kyungsoo was not there in the audience, and he  _ promised _ .

“How did dress rehearsal go?”

His voice is excited, full of life, and she cringes. It is so warm, so earnest, and she hates bringing him down.  _ I didn’t do good, _ she wants to tell him.  _ I didn’t do good enough. _

She takes her time in removing her shoes, trying to formulate in her brain how to tell him that she messed up, that she wasn’t as great as he promised her she was. She hates letting people down, but at this point she feels like there was nothing she could do but let that be the case. She tries to not think of her remorse in not doing good by focusing on her anger:  _ you weren’t there and I needed you. _

“Sooyoung?”

“Don’t talk to me,” she says, because she knows that tone of his voice. He has a magic in his being that makes Sooyoung just let everything out, and she does not want that now. She has leaned on Kyungsoo for so long, and she does not deserve it.

“You did not come,” her voice is more forceful than she intended it to be, and she bites her lip, feeling guilty that she snapped, because Kyungsoo doesn’t deserve that. He is only asking. He was her only friend. But her mouth keeps running, because after all, once Sooyoung is allowed to run her mouth, she does run it. “I needed you there and you did not come.”

“Sooyoung,” his voice is patient as he watches her stand up from where she had removed her shoes. “I had that exhibition. I got the promotion. I got my knives. I’m sorry I couldn’t go, but…”

And she knows that those knives are important. That that was a good thing. That it is July eighteenth, a date that Kyungsoo has prepared for for a long time, years of preparation as an apprentice cook in this restaurant: a restaurant he had left his dreams as a musical actor for. But she is angry and embarrassed, because he promised he’d try his best, and he still wasn’t there, cheering her on. “I don’t care about your stupid knives,” she snaps. “I thought we were friends. I needed you there and you were not there.”

He is silent as he watches her in the dimness of the hallway, mulling everything over, and the panic rises in her throat because  _ I’m sorry, please don’t think too badly of me. _

He is silent; he is always silent, but his silence at this moment chokes her, fills her throat with more unshed tears because  _ this isn’t him. _ He is always quick to touch, because he knows she is a tactile person and that touch calms her down. A hug, a pat on the back, a gentle squeeze on her shoulder. But not this, not him just staring with his dark brown eyes shining black in the dark fluorescent of their narrow hallway.

_ Don’t give up on me. _

“There’s galbitang in the dining room,” he says. Even though galbitang is her favorite, her mouth is dry. Even dryer when he moves away, away from the kitchen, towards the rooms, spreading chill into her every bones. “Good night, Sooyoung.”

-

Sooyoung wakes up to coffee and toast.

But Kyungsoo is not in the kitchen, and that is the most unusual thing, one that leaves her empty. She knows she is in the wrong, she just doesn’t know how to begin atoning for her mistakes.

-

He still comes home, still makes small talk. He still makes breakfast. But he doesn’t smile anymore, doesn’t tease her, doesn’t meet her eyes in that best friend assessment way that she knew was for the purpose of making sure she was alright. She hurt him, she knows, because she was too harsh, and she misses him. She misses talking to him, misses practicing her lines with him, misses his food and his smiles, the general sound of his voice.

She wants to make it right, but “sorry” doesn’t seem enough.

-

Kyungsoo wakes up to the smell of bacon and eggs and toasted bread.

_ Toasted was too generous _ , he thinks, scrunching his nose. Burnt, more likely. And it smells like too much oil because there is too much smoke. He furrows his brows at the ceiling.  _ Who is cooking? _ He just woke up. Sooyoung would burn water if she even attempted to boil it.

Curious, even alarmed that an interloper had entered the apartment, he gets on his feet and walks outside quickly, cautiously, quietly. He is readying himself for an altercation.

But there is going to be no altercation.

“You’re awake, good morning!”

For standing by the kitchen island, slopping half-burnt hash browns onto plates, is Sooyoung in an apron that was usually draped around his own body rather than hers, her dark hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail when it was usually framing her face prettily. Like she just rolled out of bed and decided, she’s going to cook today, with no expertise or skill or whatever, she was just going to. She looks out of place in Kyungsoo’s little kitchen kingdom, and still she looks like she belonged there all the same.

“What’s this?” Kyungsoo asks, voice skittish. He’d been skittish ever since  _ that _ day, when she snapped at him, when he decided maybe she needed the space.

“Breakfast.” Her voice falters a bit, and they stare at each other, the island providing a boundary, a wall, a barrier, between them.

There is silence. Silence with just them staring at anything except each other, words at the tip of their tongues, both hesitant to just let it all out.

And then Sooyoung moves.

Slowly, like a queen, like Perdita, she carefully makes her way to him, like every movement would break her, would break this tension and give way for nothing. He watches her, watches her feet come closer.

Her hands come up to hold his hands, eyes earnest as she looks up at him. He couldn’t resist at this point, whatever reservations he possessed about giving Sooyoung her space dissipates. His fingers curl around hers, familiarity trumping days of cold, like they have always done, in the thick of their friendship.

“Kyungsoo,” she murmurs. “I missed you.”

And like he didn’t hear the first time, she says it again, firmly, more earnest, like her words were her only weapon. “I missed you. And I’m really, really sorry I had been a bad friend.”

It was slow, gradual, but it still happened. His arms come down, her arms come up, looping around his neck, and then are pressed together in an embrace again, like so many times before. Their distance the past few days hurt him, but it hurt her, too. 

“I missed you, too.” He whispers, lips pressed against the smooth skin of her temple, like he’s always done, like he has always been allowed to. She cries into the collar of his shirt, relief flooding her, her apologies flowing freely from her lips: apologies that are answered with whispered reassurances:  _ it’s okay. We’ll be alright. _

Standing in the warm glow of the fluorescent ceiling lights in the kitchen where he is most confident in, Sooyoung finds no reason to doubt him. There has never been any reason to doubt him, and over overcooked bacon and burnt toast, Sooyoung allows herself to believe.

One morning at a time.

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos and comments for our author! <3 You could also leave a like and share with your friends on Twitter! Just look for our festival thread on @exovelvetwrtrs.


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